Bridget Jones's Bestie

Judith Woods | YOU Magazine – September 11, 2016

Comedy writer and actress Sarah Solemani plays Bridget Jones’s New Best Friend in the much-anticipated third film. And she was thrilled to be championed for the role by Renée Zellweger herself, she tells Judith Woods. Photographs by Rachell Smith.

‘I’m Bridget’s friend and as a friend, it’s my job to get her laid. It’s what friends do, isn’t it?’ I suppose it is, given that the Bridget in question is perhaps the world’s most famous singleton, and this friendship mission statement comes from British actress and comedy writer Sarah Solemani, who plays Bridget’s New Best Friend Miranda in the much-anticipated Bridget Jones’s Baby. 

The film chronicles the next phase of Bridget’s hapless life having found herself single at 43 and still bruised from a distant break-up with Mark Darcy (the plot deviates from the most recent Bridget Jones novel, in which Bridget is a widow, following Mark’s untimely death). As you might surmise from the title, Miranda succeeds in her matchmaking plan. But who is the baby’s father: old flame Colin Firth (Mr Darcy) or new hottie Patrick Dempsey (aka Dr McDreamy in Grey’s Anatomy), who plays American billionaire Jack Qwant?

Having had a sneak preview of the film, I can attest it’s not just hilarious but make-a-block-booking-with-all-your-girlfriends-at-one-of-those-cinemas-that-serve-wine hilarious. Bring your daughter. Bring your mum, for that matter; Bridget is a modern icon whose well-meaning klutziness and grace under fire unites the generations. But with great poignancy, Sarah reflects that her own mother, Rachel, a huge Bridget fan, won’t be around to share the fun. A sociology teacher, she died of cancer when Sarah was just 16.

‘What can I say? It was a nightmare; the way she died was awful,’ she says quietly. ‘I became aware that life is short and that every tiny choice we make is against a bigger picture of life and death. My mum loved the Bridget Jones books, so it was nice and special to reconnect with something she would have been proud of. When the news came through that I’d been cast, I looked upwards and thanked her for making it happen.’

The chemistry between Sarah, 34, whose deadpan comic timing is faultless, and Renée Zellweger, 47, positively fizzes with energy. ‘When I went for the audition Renée could not have been nicer, giving me the thumbs-up from behind the camera,’ Sarah says. ‘I’ve had auditions where the star wasn’t interested or was too busy trying to impress the director to give me much space, but she was brilliant. After I got the part I said, “Thank you so much,” and she replied, “It had to be you, silly.”’

Bridget is now a high-powered television executive (hurrah!), single again (boo!) and desperately trying to relive – or rather reinvent – her youth with Miranda, the station’s much younger, hard-partying news anchor (eek!). As they set off for a girls’ weekend away, buttoned-up Bridget is smartly dressed in white jeans and nude heels for what she assumes will be a spa break. It transpires that Miranda, wearing tiny denim shorts, wellies and a come-hither look, is taking her to a music festival in a very muddy field.

The chaotic, slapstick and debauched results are laugh-aloud funny and I daren’t disclose more for fear of spoiling it. But right from the get-go this film, featuring top-notch cameos from Ed Sheeran and Emma Thompson, underlines the fact that the outpouring of affection for the Bridget Jones franchise is because it’s as much about female bonding as finding The One.

‘Bridget is infatuated with Miranda and I totally get that,’ says Sarah. ‘Meeting someone and making friends is a form of courtship and it’s terribly flattering when the other person responds. Sometimes my husband Daniel will watch me getting terribly overexcited and voluble with a strange woman at a party and ask, “What on earth’s going on?” I’ll say, “Can’t you see? I’m falling in love.”’

Sarah has friends of all ages and believes a range of perspectives adds an extra richness to her life. ‘I love being around older women. They tend to be more relaxed, don’t put up with any p***-takers and have a bit of money to make their wardrobes amazing.’ 

One friend is Beeban Kidron, 55, who directed the second Bridget Jones film. ‘She’s got two kids, does a ton of stuff other than film-making – she’s a baroness in the House of Lords – and still has time to have a laugh with her mates. She’ll never say, “Oh, you’re too young to…” We’re the same age in spirit. I have younger friends too, mostly young creative girls, writers/actresses. I love their zest.’

However, Sarah insists that – unlike Bridget – she’s rarely led astray by younger pals. ‘Most of the time I’m an astray-leader. We had a fabulous wrap party for Bridget Jones at a fancy hotel, and there was a big swimming pool roped off. I turned to Beattie Edmondson, an excellent young actress who is in the film, and said, “Come on, we’re going in.” She was instantly up for it – I mean, she is the daughter of a Young One! We did a synchronised swimming routine, and at one point I swam up to Beattie and tried to do a Dirty Dancing lift. The hotel staff were so p***** off they refused us a towel, so we were dripping outside in our cocktail dresses. Mine was a cheap vintage polyester number, bright red, and the dye stained my skin so I looked like I’d escaped a butchering. Worth it, though!’

Sarah, who grew up in London, the daughter of a Persian Jewish father and a Northern Irish mother, is a dark-eyed beauty with a great line in quizzical expressions. She has a sister, Anna, 29, who works in the charity sector. Sarah is married to Daniel Ingram, 34, who works in finance and specialises in sustainable investment. They have a daughter, Soraya, who will soon turn three. (‘Soraya is extremely funny. She can deliver a line bang on time, and she’s not afraid to push boundaries with her subject matter.’)

When we meet, Sarah is still slightly dazed by her YOU photo session the previous day. ‘I just can’t believe that was me!’ she cries. ‘I feel like I’ve duped everyone. I looked amazing, and it was such a laugh, so thank YOU for having me.’

Endearingly for an ultra-bright, super-successful Cambridge graduate with a degree in social and political sciences, Sarah says ‘thank you’ a lot and with genuine feeling. This may be her first major international movie, but Sarah’s fearless comedy career in Britain has been gaining traction. She is best known as the earnestly right-on biology teacher Miss Gulliver in the Jack Whitehall sitcom Bad Education, object of desire for his immature history teacher Alfie Wickers. 

‘Jack is so sweet. His mother plays a school mum in the show and just watching them together – how respectful he is of her – you can tell he is a good egg and she has brought him up well.’

She had a part in James Corden’s screwball thriller The Wrong Mans (‘We chatted like a pair of schoolgirls – boys, babies, clothes. It’s no surprise he’s doing so well Stateside, he has a talent for bringing people in’) and played the eponymous Her (opposite Russell Tovey) in near-the-knuckle Bafta-winning BBC Three cult comedy Him and Her. 

But right now it’s all about Bridget. Bridget Jones’s Baby finds Sarah in a different league – and with a New Best Friend of her own. She loyally deflects widespread suggestions that Renée has had too much cosmetic work done. ‘Renée is the most beautiful woman, inside and out,’ she says stoutly. ‘The news stories make me sad because it’s another example of shaming women, which is just so wrong and so depressing.

‘Renée is professional but also sweet – and surprisingly naughty and funny. A lot of the time we improvised and just riffed on the slightly vulgar aspects of sex.’ It all sounds tremendous fun. ‘We don’t get much proper comedy in the cinema, us girls,’ Sarah points out. ‘Look at the fuss everyone made about Bridesmaids – a great film but you’d think it was the coming of the Messiah in comedy terms. We become trained to laugh at boys’ things, so it’s great to have something that’s a bit closer to home.’

Sarah lives with her family in Hackney, East London. Her father Akiva, now retired, lives in the next borough. A maths lecturer, he gave up academia and retrained as a full-time foster carer. Both he and his late wife were active Labour Party members. Akiva was conferred with ‘honorary miner’ status in the 1980s when he gave his salary to the coal workers during their national strike. He also loves theatre and sparked Sarah’s passion for performance. ‘I vividly remember the first time I went to the theatre with my dad; it was The Wizard of Oz and it was so dazzling I decided to follow the Yellow Brick Road into acting.

‘I was in a local drama group as a kid, then I was accepted into the National Youth Theatre, had an agent by the age of 17 and thought, “Oooh, this is easy.”’ Confident she could pick up the threads after university, she went to Cambridge and joined the Footlights theatre group, in which she was ‘always, always’ the only girl. 

‘I became vice president and we took productions to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. When you do live shows you get a sense of what works; you don’t know it’s funny until you get a laugh.’

But after she graduated with a 2:1, reality hit hard; the work dried up and she found herself working in a call centre to make ends meet. So she decided to write her own scripts rather than wait for work offers to come to her. ‘There are lots of funny women out there but not a lot of funny parts for them, so I decided to redress the balance,’ she says. She has written plays for the Royal Court, the Old Vic and Soho Theatre, and both wrote and starred in The Secrets, a darkly funny one-off drama for BBC One about a bride who discovers the night before her wedding that her fiancé was accused of rape. ‘I was proud of that,’ says Sarah. ‘The BBC left us to make it how we wanted, and it was the most creative, brilliant experience.’

She is currently shooting the second series of No Offence, coming soon to Channel 4. ‘It’s like The Bill, only mental and set in Manchester,’ says Sarah. ‘I play a hard-nosed DCI. Think Helen Mirren meets Kenneth Williams – that’s my character inspiration.’

It sounds like the ultimate portfolio career and it suits her. ‘If you were to tell me I’d landed a role in a play for a year, I’d panic,’ Sarah says. ‘I thrive on variety; I’m prepared for taking risks and I set out to organise my life so that even though I have a child I can be as spontaneous as possible. My wonderful mother-in-law Amanda comes over from West London to look after Soraya and they adore each other. She’s very encouraging and tells me I’m doing a good job, which every first-time mother needs to hear, especially if your own mum isn’t around. You have to make sure you have a support system and are not too hard on yourself. 

'I like seeing my friends and having time for myself. When I got the part in Bridget Jones’s Baby I immediately started figuring out how to make my own childcare work during filming.’ Soraya was only one at the time, so Amanda brought her on set. ‘When they’re that little, everyone finds them cute until they start weeing on a prop and then you realise it’s impossible to have a toddler on a film set!’

Renée and Sarah spent a lot of time shooting the breeze between scenes. ‘The set people created a festival for us to film in and one of the green rooms was a tent full of hay bales, where we would hang and talk about our lives in between takes. Another thing about Renée: that girl likes to chat. And I do mean chat.’ 

But it wasn’t all idle banter. When the make-up artist mentioned that Sarah was a scriptwriter, Renée asked Sarah to send her what she was working on. ‘I thought, “That’s sweet but no way does she mean it,”’ admits Sarah. ‘But the next time we were on set she said, “Hey, you didn’t send it to me,” so I did.’

Renée, who is a producer as well as an actress, read it, loved it and was encouraging; that script became The Secrets. Another high-profile professional generous with her time was BBC newscaster Fiona Bruce, whom Renée and Sarah met while researching their roles. ‘Fiona took us on a tour of the news studios and talked us through her day. It was hugely impressive – the deadlines, the quick response times, the way she stayed calm under pressure. It really gave us something to draw on.’

Sarah’s performance in the film is guaranteed to get her noticed; unlike romantic, wistful Bridget she is gung-ho and entirely blasé about one-night stands. In real life things are rather different. Sarah describes her husband as ‘Mr Darcy but with 30 per cent more humour. Daniel gives me roots and wings and is terribly practical but romantic too,’ she says dreamily.

‘He fixes things and is organised but also makes sure we have fun date nights. Above all he still makes me laugh.’ Laughter is a powerful force, off and on screen, but in a film such as Bridget Jones’s Baby there must be light and shade, poignancy and, above all, believability.

Three alternative endings were shot and for a long time not even the cast knew whether Bridget would end up with Colin Firth or Patrick Dempsey. ‘It’s a shame any woman has to pick just the one husband,’ sighs Sarah with mock incomprehension. ‘Having had a child myself, you do need two men – one to help with the child and one to help with your needs. Actually, three – one more to help with the house.’ 

But there was no way Bridget was going to do anything too avant garde. ‘You can’t suspend the truth, otherwise the audience won’t connect and won’t trust you,’ says Sarah. She’s right, because there’s a truth at the core of Bridget Jones that touches us all: is there any woman who hasn’t felt unsure or lonely or fearful that she won’t ever be loved? Or lost her keys and purse, or found herself woefully over- or under-dressed for an occasion?

‘All women know how hard it is to fail publicly and hold on to your dignity,’ says Sarah. ‘Bridget has shown us that you can pick yourself up, dust down your bunny outfit and walk into the party with your head – and your pink floppy ears – held high.’

Wise words, which the nation’s women should hold close to our hearts as we clink our glasses and watch the opening credits roll.

SPOT ON FOR SARAH 

Bridget pants or small pants? Not big pants; they constrict your tummy so you can’t eat as much. Marks & Spencer pants, or Agent Provocateur if I’m feeling fruity.

Mark Darcy or Daniel Cleaver? Ah, it’s tricky, isn’t it? Mr Darcy has that explosive, simmering passion, so uptight and English, whereas Daniel Cleaver is more suave, more European and looser. Basically, Mr Darcy is the ‘yin’ to Daniel Cleaver’s ‘yang’. Or maybe the ‘schlang’ to his ‘schlong’. The point is, most women want a bit of both.

Reading A House Full of Daughters by Juliet Nicolson. It’s a simple premise looking at seven generations of women in one family, but it’s got all the juicy bits of several novels in one.

Listening to I love 90s garage and R&B, played very loud in my car.

Watching I am obsessed with the Channel 4 documentary 24 Hours in Police Custody – it’s genius TV.

Dream dinner party guest Charlotte Church. We met at a rave at Glastonbury this year and had the most amazing chat about politics and global affairs. Love her.

Guilty secret If I wanted, I could probably grow a full beard.

Motto Nothing feels as good as fat tastes.